::Guest Post #2: Rose & James' Transracial Adoptions::

We would like to share our second guest post about Rose and James' transracial adoptions with two beautiful daughters, Jada and Tiana. We thoroughly enjoyed reading up on their experiences as a multicultural family, so here it is:

"Thank you, Brooke for inviting us to share our story!

My husband, James and I adopted our beautiful girls in 2009 and 2013. We are a multicultural family and I call our family “multicultural” because we all have different cultural/racial identities not only through adoption but also through marriage. James is Black and from St. Thomas, USVI. I am Irish-Canadian. Both of our girls were born in Canada but come from different cultures. Jada is 8 year old and Jamaican-Canadian. Tiana is 1.5 year old and Native (Ojibwa)-Korean. James, Jada and I are Deaf. Tiana has unilateral hearing loss. On top of our racial and cultural identities, our children also have special needs. Now that I’ve given you some background about our family, I can begin to share some of our experiences!

Jada was 3.5 year old when we adopted her in 2009. During the process of adopting her, James and I had many conversations about our racial identities and how we can, as a family, bring those cultures together in one household. We did not fully appreciate the beauty and the challenges of transracial/transcultural adoption until we actually brought Jada home.  Jada shared same race as her new daddy but she shared same gender as her new mommy. For a while, she wanted to look like me and that was heart-breaking. I sought advice from many other adoptive families online, from books and from the Black community, and implemented many of those advices. I learned how to do Jada’s hair and decorated her hair in many different styles (at present day, she has braidlocks and absolutely loves it!). We brought home books from the library about Jamaica. We made sure we had toys, books and movies that reflect her cultural and racial identity. We’ve visited barber shops and through the barber shop in our town, she got to know some Nigerian women. We made an effort to visit them every weekend after Farmer’s Market for over a year but unfortunately, the barber shop closed last year when the owner moved back to Nigeria. Every now and then, we cook Caribbean food at home. This summer, we will be going to the big Caribana event in Toronto and hope to go there every summer. My husband’s family lives in the US, so we do not see them as often as we would love to but when we do visit with them, Jada gets the opportunity to be submersed the culture. We’ve visited St. Thomas and hope to visit Jamaica one day in the future. A couple years ago, Jada shared that she feels stronger affiliation with the Deaf community and feels it is too hard to immerse herself in the Black community as a Deaf person but appreciates knowing about her culture. This would be a blog for other time on my website one day!  

Tiana was 8 months old when we adopted her in 2013. Our experience with incorporating Native-Korean culture into our family is a different from Jada’s for many reasons. The Native community here is very strong, very present and very well-known. The adoption process before bringing Tiana home included a band representative from her Native community and their approval is required. The adoption agreement includes a contract with the tribe and a ceremony at the reservation. In the past 8 months, we’ve been to several teachings and ceremonies. The Native community also includes Jada in their events and treats her as part of their family. We’ve gotten several gifts from the community and have slowly added them to our home decor. Needless to say, there has been almost no real effort on our part to include the Native culture in our home because their presence is very strong and we absolutely love it! On the other hand, the Korean culture has not yet been incorporated in our family and we hope to learn more in the months ahead. My sister is Korean (she and myself are adoptees) and has two children who are Korean and white. Tiana and Sanja share same middle name.  Tiana will always have an aunt and cousins who share same racial identity as her but we hope to learn more about the Korean culture and share what we learned with our children.  

Tiana & Jada

Becoming a multicultural family has been a beautiful experience and we’ve learned so much along the way. We know there is so much more to learn about and so many more ways to celebrate our cultures and races within our family unit. Our goal is never to blend our cultures, but to celebrate each culture for what they are. We would never be a traditional family (not in today’s society) but we are a strong, loving and an authentic family who celebrate each member in the family.

I tried my best to share our story without turning it into a novel! It is a bit long but I hope you enjoyed it. Thank you for reading!" 

Thank you Rose and James for sharing your experiences with all of us! :)

Much love,
Brooke & Brian